Must Love Books, page 15
It shouldn’t have surprised her to learn he was messy, but he came off so composed, what with the graduate degrees and the professor job and the published book. It made her feel the slightest bit better to know now that whenever he emailed her, she could imagine him sitting at his cereal desk.
“I like your place,” she commented.
“I cleaned up, believe it or not. In the time I had.” He stood by the front door, gauging her reaction. He didn’t seem to know where to put his hands. One played with the cord on his shorts while the other hung at his side.
“I know. That’s okay. I didn’t give you much time.” Nora looked away, busying herself with trying to make out the titles of the books lining his bookshelf. Every passing second reminded her that she’d shown up here unannounced and probably unwelcome, and she couldn’t expect him to fix her life just because she was here.
He stayed there, still gauging. “How have you been?”
A complicated question, if there ever was one. Nora ran a hand over her hair and turned to him. “How would you feel about pizza?” she asked.
“Nora.”
“Santos.”
He narrowed his eyes and gave her a puzzled look. “Are you a little bit drunk?”
“I would call it tipsy-adjacent.”
Andrew rubbed the back of his neck, looking thoughtful as he considered Nora. “I would love pizza,” he decided, breaking into a warm smile. “Why don’t you sit down?”
That was all the invitation she needed. She sank into the couch between a tie and a pair of jeans, sending Andrew into a belated cleaning frenzy.
“I’ll just grab those…and that,” he said as he reached for them, but she pulled the tie from his grasp and worked her head through the opening. Once she wrestled it past her hair, her curls fluffed back into place.
“Can we have it delivered?” she asked. “Do you like pepperoni?”
Andrew conceded and ordered a pizza. Afterwards, he tossed his phone onto the couch but didn’t sit down.
“Would you mind if I took a quick shower?” he asked. “On account of the gym and all?”
She dipped her head into a low, somber nod. “I will allow this.”
“Okay. That’s my phone. If the pizza deliverer calls, press five to buzz them in. And…here’s a book,” he said, looking around and grabbing one off his desk. “For your entertainment. I’ll be back.”
She examined the cover of the book: mint green with pink block letters, something about creativity. To its credit, it didn’t sound as boring as some of the Parsons books she endured.
The sputter of a shower sounded in the background. Nora flipped through the pages and the book fell open at the halfway point. Marking the page was a piece of card stock cut roughly in the shape of a bookmark. At the top, in her handwriting, were the words Keynote Speaker!!
As the conference wound to a close, Nora had gone around plucking out the bookmarks to rubber-band together and take back to the office. Andrew must have gotten to this one first. If he’d seen her find this, she would have pretended not to see meaning in it. She would have teased him for being so self-involved as to steal a bookmark that mentioned him. But here, alone, she savored the feeling it gave her—that same whole-body warmth she got whenever he hugged her.
Nora settled into the couch, resting her head on the armrest and propping the book up on her stomach. Her eyes flitted over the words on the page, but they kept coming back to the bookmark.
She closed her eyes and let the book fall forward. At some point, the shower stopped running. Moments later came footsteps, drawing closer.
“What’s this?”
Nora opened her eyes. Andrew stood above her, hair tousled and wet. He gestured to her, the book, her tie.
“You stole my bookmark,” she said.
“It says Keynote Speaker!!” His finger poked the top of the bookmark. “I’m keynote speaker.”
“That’s what you want to be called, is it?”
“Yes. Bestselling author works too.”
She laughed. He made his way around the couch, and Nora sat up to make room for him. He’d changed into a plain white shirt and jeans. She liked seeing him like this, more casual and approachable than the button-downs he usually wore. She could see his bare arms for the first time, the slight curve of muscle.
Now that he was sitting next to her, only inches apart, Nora didn’t know what to do. She stared ahead at the TV that wasn’t on. With each passing second, she was reminded more and more of her abrupt, possibly unwelcome appearance.
“Is it weird that I’m here?” she asked. It was better if she mentioned it. It was good to show self-awareness, maybe.
Andrew leaned his back against the arm of the couch to face her. “It’s only weird if you make it weird.”
Nora nodded, pretending to find meaning in his nonanswer. She turned slightly toward him. “Did you have plans tonight?”
“Only put off writing my manuscript—which you’re helping me do right now, so thank you.”
She forced a smile. Soon he’d ask why she was here, and she’d have to tell him about the three, and she knew she wouldn’t be able to use the same blurt-it-and-run strategy she’d used on Beth. For starters, pizza was coming. And now that the looming number had been given voice, she knew she couldn’t lock it back in. It pressed forward, already on the tip of her tongue.
He eyed her curiously. “Did you come from somewhere?”
“A work happy hour thing.” Nora traced a seam on the side of her jeans. “It was at a bar a couple of stops from here, and I didn’t feel like going back to Oakland right away, and—” She looked up, suddenly breathless, and let the words burst forth. “What if I’m a three?”
“A three?” he repeated.
“On that happiness scale. You’re a ten. I think I’m a three.”
“Oh.” His brow furrowed. “Why?”
Nora found a loose thread on the seam and pulled it. “It’s not one thing. It’s just a lot of things. I feel like it was a slow descent. Like at one point, maybe a year ago, I was probably—well, not a ten, but whatever’s normal for people who aren’t you.”
“The U.S. average was six-point-something, almost seven.” Only Andrew Santos could spout happiness statistics from memory while managing to sound comforting.
“Yeah. I could have been a six-point-something a year ago. But then…”
“What?”
She cast an uncertain glance at him. He would surely realize the common thread connecting everything she was thinking of. But she’d come this far.
“I think it started when Tom and Lynn were laid off. I didn’t like the work I did, but I loved working with them. I thought that even if it took me a while to figure out what I wanted to do in life, I would be fine with that because I loved my team. But then Tom and Lynn left, and suddenly I was doing the work of three people. I was fine because I still had Beth, but then she left. And—” Nora hesitated. This next part would be new information for him. Information that validated his suspicions about Parsons. But for the sake of her three, she needed to get it out there.
“They cut our salaries,” she said. Andrew, who up until then had been listening with concern, frowned. “I could barely afford rent as it is, so I took a second job.” That, she would have to be vague on. Telling him even this was messy enough. “And today was just one of those days where everything went wrong. At my job. At my second job. I just feel like I can’t do it anymore. I’m so tired all the time. So,” she said, straightening her posture, “is there something in that happiness report of yours that can tell me what to do?”
Andrew looked physically pained now. She wasn’t sure why until she heard his whispered confession.
“I didn’t read it.”
“What?”
“I didn’t read it,” he repeated, eyes wide. “I read an article that summarized the findings, and I downloaded the report because I wanted to read it, but it was two hundred pages. I should never talk about reports before I’ve read them. I clearly misconstrued the information somehow when I was relating it to you, and now it’s led to this.”
Nora wasn’t sure what to expect from her honesty, but watching him panic about his reading habits was not on the list. She’d been wrong, she realized, to think he might know what to do. Her three was apparently beyond even his optimistic capabilities. “It’s okay,” she said, giving him a weak smile. “Your failure to read an article has no bearing on my three.” Still, she could see his mind working overtime as he looked around the room.
“I could read it right now,” he offered. “I’m a fast reader.” He said it with such hope, eyebrows raised so high his forehead wrinkled.
Nora’s small smile grew a little. “Please don’t.”
He was still looking around, less frenzied than before. But his gaze steadied when he settled his eyes on Nora. “I’m sorry you’re having a hard time.”
Just this acknowledgment brought relief, let her crawl out from under the weight of pretending everything was fine. “Thanks.” She stared back at Andrew, wondering what he might say next.
He opened his mouth just as his phone chirped. They glanced in its direction, startled. Andrew reached for it. “Pizza’s here,” he explained. He disappeared into the hall, returning with a pizza box that he set on the coffee table.
Nora was two bites into a slice when he emerged from the kitchen with plates. She relished the way he shook his head when he saw she’d already started eating. It was like things were settling back to normal after her confession. If they had a normal.
“Is there anything more you want to talk about?” he asked, taking a slice of pizza. “About what you were saying before?”
“No.” Getting the words out was catharsis enough. Andrew’s panic was a clear sign that he wasn’t in any position to help her anyway. Nora took another bite. “You?” Follow-up questions about Parsons had to be coming.
Andrew considered as he chewed. “What’s your second job?”
“Working in an ice cream shop. I’m an excellent singer.” She lifted a brow just enough to let on that she was teasing.
He stopped chewing and delivered a frown. “You are unbelievably cruel.”
Nora laughed, swatting the crumpled napkin he threw her way.
But the effect of her confession still lingered, like wisps of smoke hanging in the air around them. Nora reached for a second slice, trying to think of a topic that could bring them back to familiar ground.
“How’s the book coming along?” she asked. Andrew let out an uncharacteristic grunt. “That well, huh?”
“I haven’t been writing for it.”
“Why not?”
He shrugged and drew circles in the crumbs on his plate. “I haven’t wanted to. I have it outlined and it’s partly written, but when I sit down to write it, I just…don’t.”
Apathy and inaction, she could get behind. “Why?”
“It just seems…boring,” he said.
It was boring, because all business books were boring, but she didn’t want to bring him down any further.
“Boring how?”
“It’s not the book I pitched.” He ran a hand through his damp hair and pursed his lips almost bitterly. “You know what they told me when I came to the Parsons office? They wanted me to broaden the topic. Water it down. I wanted to write something based on my dissertation, but they said it would be too narrow.”
Nora must have given herself away, because he fell back as if she’d wounded him. “Don’t tell me you’re on their side, Nora.”
She did her best to look unamused, but she felt a smile creeping through. “I’m on the side of logic. Parsons books have to appeal to a broad audience if they want to sell. I think it’s good that you expanded your topic.”
“That I went from boring and specific to boring and broad?”
She liked seeing him like this, as despondent as he’d ever been. Part of her wanted to bring him down further, find the depths of his misery and swim in it, revel in their mutual unhappiness. In no longer being alone in her unhappiness. But she knew, watching him play with the crumbs on his plate, that it wasn’t the same, his unhappiness and hers. He could leave his behind.
“Hey.” Nora nudged him in his side and he looked up. “No one would find you boring,” she said, thinking back to his keynote, the line of people waiting for his signature at the conference. “Why do you think we’re after you? We don’t publish books that won’t sell.” Actually, they did—a lot—but they always thought they would sell at the time, which counted for something.
It worked. She caught a glimpse of a dimple, just for a moment, before it faded.
“Thanks.” He put a hand on her knee. It tingled at the touch. “I do want it to sell—I want it to sell better than my last book. Not because of royalties,” he added before she could say anything. “Just…Arthur Moore wrote most of the last book. I just contributed.”
“You contributed in a way that blew the last edition out of the water,” she reminded him.
He shrugged. “Still, this new book is all me. It’s on me if it fails, and it’s on me if it succeeds. I want people to read it. I want them to love it. If it doesn’t sell as well, I’ll feel like a failure. But I still want it to be me. I don’t want to just…water it down, slap my name on it, and make money. That’s not my idea of selling.” He sighed and leaned back against the couch—hand, Nora noticed, still on her knee. “Now that I’m saying it, it sounds so trivial.”
“It’s not,” she said. She couldn’t deny that Parsons’s approach of publishing broad, easily marketable books was smart from a business perspective. But knowing that Andrew wasn’t swayed by the company logic made her feel like she wasn’t alone in seeing more than marketability in books. She glanced at him, didn’t even look away when he met her gaze. “If it matters to you, it’s not trivial.” Her order number that morning was glaring proof of that.
“What matters to you?” he asked.
It disappointed her that the only thought that came to mind was Not Parsons. Books might have been her instinctual response ordinarily, but that was what led her to Parsons in the first place and look where it had gotten her. Now she had no response. Only a fear that whatever mattered would lead her down a murky path, just as Parsons had.
Nora studied him, searching for an answer. She could say something simple, like “You,” and then they’d move closer on the couch and add a physical component to this thing they’d been dancing around for the last few weeks.
She couldn’t, though. That would complicate things. There was no good reason to pull him in deeper with this version of Nora, with pieces missing inside her. She missed them. She missed herself. The Nora who giggled with Beth over silly jokes instead of tolerating them with forced laughter. The Nora who spent weekends devouring books instead of working or staring at the ceiling. The Nora who didn’t hide from sincerity or truth. That Nora had been gone for a year now, since the layoffs hit her team and sent her retreating further and further into her unhappiness.
But that wasn’t any kind of answer to give.
“You.”
He held her gaze, surprised but pleased, and she leaned in to kiss him before he could speak.
There wasn’t a plan with the kiss. It was meant to distract him—and her—from her swirling thoughts. But it worked. On both of them.
She leaned closer as they kissed. Andrew felt around for their plates, clumsily setting them on the coffee table before pulling her forward to lie on top of him. She’d never been this close to him, this flush against him. His hands stroked her back, her sides. She wanted more.
It was Nora who led them to the bedroom, a move she considered bold only because she didn’t know where it was. While she wandered past the couch, fingers threaded between his, she hoped she didn’t accidentally lead him to the bathroom.
The room was dark, door ajar, but she made out the shape of a bed and stepped toward it. Andrew drew ahead of her and started throwing things off the bed—shirts, shorts, a towel; he really did believe anything could be a closet if he wanted it to be. She watched him do one last sweep with his eyes, and when he seemed sure there were no more clothes lurking about, he reached an arm out for her to join him. She wanted to say something sarcastic, something like, You sure it’s safe? and then he could say some kind of retort, but she realized it was pointless to pretend they weren’t both already here in his bedroom, finally ready to admit what they wanted. She skipped the remark and joined him on the bed.
She liked the way he looked at her when he took the tie off, the one she’d tipsily wriggled herself into on the couch. It was a look of amused reproach, a raised eyebrow and a smile. He was careful when he took it off, guiding it up her neck and navigating it past her curls.
After he tossed the tie aside, he gently smoothed down her hair, looking so concerned and maybe even content that she had to do something to stop it. She kissed him again, harder this time, to remind him they were not there to exchange romantic gazes.
It worked. She wiped his gazes right off the map, had him squeezing his eyes shut, taking ragged breaths, gripping her hips. She allowed herself to watch him like this, the sheen of sweat on his forehead, the tension in his jaw, because if he didn’t see her staring, it was okay.
But it was only temporary. Afterwards, after he’d started getting dressed and she’d stumbled into the bathroom to pee, she came back to find him sitting on the rumpled sheets, half-dressed in his shirt and boxer-briefs, still gazing.
She looked away and picked up her shirt. He waited until she reached for her jeans before speaking.
“Do you need those?”
“I’m not sure they’d let me on BART without pants.”
“I mean, you could just sleep here.”
